Billing for your cloth and garment shop in Kerala
A kasavu saree, a mundu and a metre of school cloth, each billed at its own rate on your phone.
.jpg){kind=link}
From the Onakkodi bill for five to the weaver society's lot
The Onam sale rate set on the piece, not on the board
Mark the sale rate on each saree or mundu that is in the offer. Every bill after that uses it, and the pieces not in the offer stay at their old rate. When a customer asks for the rate of a piece, the phone gives one answer.
Onakkodi: the bill remembers who got which piece
Onakkodi is the new cloth the head of the house gives to each person at Onam. Give each person a line of their own, the father's mundu, the mother's kasavu saree and the three children's outfits, and the bill is the record of who got which piece, to look at next Onam.
The weaver society's lot written down as it arrives
A lot from a society comes with pieces of different weaves, a kasavu saree, a set-mundu and a plain mundu, each to be sold at its own rate. Note each kind with the rate you will sell it at. The stock count goes up by what came, so the shelf and the notes match from the first day.
Tools for a kasavu and mundu counter
Online orders
A page of your kasavu sarees and mundus on your own online shop, for the family that would otherwise open the Onam sale on a phone.
Orders to suppliers
An order for white uniform cloth sent to the mill agent in the month before school reopens, and a note of the metres that came.
Offers for regular customers
A discount for the families who buy their children's uniform cloth from you every June, given at the counter when the new term's cloth is chosen.
Why a Kerala cloth shop dreads the same discount board every Onam
Every shop on the street puts up the same Onam discount
In the weeks before Onam each cloth shop in the lane hangs a board with its offers, and the shop next door cuts a little deeper. You mark down the sarees and mundus the board names, and then a customer asks for a piece that is not on the board and wants the same rate. Nobody at the counter can say for sure which pieces are on sale and which are not.
A kasavu saree, a set-mundu and a plain mundu are three different lines
The same cloth shop sells the gold-bordered kasavu saree, the set-mundu for a woman and the plain mundu for a man, and each comes in its own sizes and colours. The notebook has one line for "saree" and one for "mundu", and when the shelf is half empty you cannot tell which kind has gone.
School reopens with the monsoon, and the uniform cloth goes out on credit
School reopens with the monsoon, and families buy uniform cloth by the metre in the rain, carry it to the tailor and ask to pay at the month end. A line in the notebook says "uniform, 3 metres" with a name, and by the time the money comes nobody is sure of the metres or the day. The tailor too asks how many metres were cut.
.jpg){kind=link}
Thrissur cloth, Kozhikode lanes and Kannur looms: where Kerala's cloth trade sits
A cloth shop in Kerala sells goods that come from, or are traded through, some very different districts.
- Thrissur is counted the hub of jewellery and textile business in South India, and it makes 70 percent of Kerala's plain gold jewellery.
- S.M. Street, or Mittayitheruvu, is one of Kozhikode's busiest streets for sweets, textiles, electronics and spices.
- Kerala depends mainly on Kannur for its handloom exports. The district has 73 weaver societies and 13,667 weavers.
- Chalai in Thiruvananthapuram is called Kerala's oldest market, believed to go back to the 14th century.
Questions Kerala cloth and garment shop owners ask
A customer in my home-town shop wants a kasavu border that I keep in the market-town shop. Can I tell her before she travels?
Yes. Both shops are under your account, so you can open the market-town shop's count of that border from the home-town counter. If it shows pieces, tell her it is there, and she makes the trip knowing.
Kasavu border cloth is sold by the metre for the tailor to stitch on. Can it sit on the same bill as a finished mundu?
Yes. The finished mundu is an item by the piece and the kasavu border an item by the metre, each at its own rate. The tailor takes the border and the family takes the mundu, with both lines on the bill.
The society changes its rate in the middle of the Onam run. What happens to the pieces already on my shelf?
They keep the selling rate you gave them, and the bills already made keep it too. Only the lot taken in after the change carries the new rate, so the shelf never shows two prices on one piece.
After a wedding party takes sixteen set-mundus, how do I know how many are left for the next customer?
The count of the set-mundu came down by sixteen with that bill, so the phone shows what is left. If it is low, the warning says so, and you can send an order to the society for the next lot.
The Onam sale and the handloom societies of Kerala
Textile shops and malls in Kerala make the most of their yearly sales at Onam, with discounts and offers. Online shopping has hurt the Onam sale since Covid, so a shop on the street now competes with the phone in the customer's hand.
Co-operatives run 84 percent of Kerala's handlooms. HANTEX is the apex marketing body for 405 handloom societies and over 10,000 weavers, so a shop that stocks handloom pieces is part of a long chain that begins at a society's loom.